ethnicity and inequality in hawai i asian american history cultu

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Challenging the dominant view of Hawai’i as a “melting pot paradise”—a place of ethnic tolerance and equality—Jonathan Okamura examines how ethnic inequality is structured and maintained in island society. He finds that ethnicity, not race or class, signifies difference for Hawaii’s people and therefore structures their social relations. In Hawai’i, residents attribute greater social significance to the presumed cultural differences between ethnicities than to more obvious physical differences, such as skin color. According to Okamura, ethnicity regulates disparities in access to resources, rewards, and privileges among ethnic groups, as he demonstrates in his analysis of socioeconomic and educational inequalities in the state. He shows that socially and economically dominant ethnic groups—Chinese Americans, Japanese Americans, and Whites—have stigmatized and subjugated the islands’ other ethnic groups—especially Native Hawaiians, Filipino Americans, and Samoans. He demonstrates how ethnic stereotypes have been deployed against ethnic minorities and how these groups have contested their subordinate political and economic status by articulating new identities for themselves.

This is the most comprehensive and up-to-date reference work on Asian Americans, comprising three volumes that address a broad range of topics on various Asian and Pacific Islander American groups from 1848 to the present day. • Presents information on Asian Americans and individual Asian ethnic groups that provides comprehensive overviews of the respective groups • Includes special topic entries that contain source information regarding major historical events • Comprises work from a truly outstanding list of contributors that include scholars, journalists, writers, community activists, graduate students, and other specialists • Expands the boundaries of Asian American studies through innovative entries that address transnationalism, gender and sexuality, and inter- and cross-disciplinarity

"Nation, Race & History in Asian American Literature" reflects on the symbolic processes through which the United States constitutes its subjects as citizens, connecting such processes to the global dynamics of empire building and a suppressed history of American imperialism. Through a comparative analysis of David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly," Lois-Ann Yamanaka's "Blu's Hanging," and Jessica Hagedorn's "Dogeaters," this study considers the ways in which bodies challenge the categories asserted in nation-building. The book proposes that underwritten by the vast histories of American imperial migrations, there are texts and bodies which challenge and reconstitute the ever-vexed definition of -American-. In -re-membering- such bodies, Maria C. Zamora proclaims our bodies as actual living texts, texts that are constantly bearing, contesting, and transforming meaning. "Nation, Race & History in Asian American Literature" will engage scholars interested in cultural and critical theory, citizenship and national identity, race and ethnicity, the body, gender studies, and transnational literature."

This two volume encyclopedia set focuses on the full expanse of contemporary Asian American experiences in the United States. Drawing on over two decades of research, it takes an unprecedented look at the major issues confronting the Asian American community as a whole, and the specific ethnic identities within that community -- from established groups such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Americans to newer groups such as Cambodian and Hmong Americans. The volumes offer 110 entries on the current state of affairs, controversies, successes, and outlooks for future for Asian Americans. The set is divided into 11 thematic sections including diversity and demographics; education; health; identity; immigrants, refugees, and citizenship; law; media; politics; war; work and economy; youth, family, and the aged. Contributors include leading experts in the fields of Asian American studies, education, public health, political science, law, economics, and psychology.

This book discusses contemporary experiences of Japanese Americans in Hawaii through analyses of the nature of their relationship to other ethnic groups. The author argues that as Japanese gradually gained economic and political status they have demonstrated collective resistance to domination, advocacy for themselves and other marginalized groups, and social responsibility to the peoples of Hawaii.

How Hawai'i became an emblem of multiculturalism during its journey to statehood in the mid-twentieth century Gateway State explores the development of Hawai'i as a model for liberal multiculturalism and a tool of American global power in the era of decolonization. The establishment of Hawai'i statehood in 1959 was a watershed moment, not only in the ways Americans defined their nation’s role on the international stage but also in the ways they understood the problems of social difference at home. Hawai'i’s remarkable transition from territory to state heralded the emergence of postwar multiculturalism, which was a response both to independence movements abroad and to the limits of civil rights in the United States. Once a racially problematic overseas colony, by the 1960s, Hawai'i had come to symbolize John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier. This was a more inclusive idea of who counted as American at home and what areas of the world were considered to be within the U.S. sphere of influence. Statehood advocates argued that Hawai'i and its majority Asian population could serve as a bridge to Cold War Asia—and as a global showcase of American democracy and racial harmony. In the aftermath of statehood, business leaders and policymakers worked to institutionalize and sell this ideal by capitalizing on Hawai'i’s diversity. Asian Americans in Hawai'i never lost a perceived connection to Asia. Instead, their ethnic difference became a marketable resource to help other Americans navigate a decolonizing world. As excitement over statehood dimmed, the utopian vision of Hawai'i fell apart, revealing how racial inequality and U.S. imperialism continued to shape the fiftieth state—and igniting a backlash against the islands’ white-dominated institutions.

Hawai?i is in many ways the most unique of the American states. Distinguished by its unusual beauty, ethnic diversity, and lingering image as a paradise, Hawai?i is special for other important, but less apparent, reasons. It is the only American state to have evolved from a kingdom, the only state with no jurisdictions below the level oføcounty, the only state in which Caucasians have never been in the majority, and the only state whose historic identity and contemporary relationships are as much with Asia and the Pacific as with the rest of the United States. The nature and trajectory of Hawaiian politics spring from the interaction of these unique elements with more traditional American cultural practices, institutions, and political processes. Also shaping past and present politics are multiple collisions among Native Hawaiians, western missionaries and businessmen, and Asian immigrants. Hawai?i Politics and Government brings together information on historical development, ethnic relations, public institutions, political culture, and current issues to discover both the similarities and the differences between Hawai?i and the rest of the country.

As America's most ethnically diverse foreign-born population, Asian Americans can puzzle political observers. This volume's multidisciplinary team of contributors employ a variety of methodologies-including quantitative, ethnographic, and historical-to illustrate how transnational ties between the U.S. and Asia have shaped, and are increasingly defining, Asian American politics in our multicultural society. Original essays by U.S.- and Asian-based scholars discuss Cambodian, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese communities from Boston to Honolulu. The volume also shows how the grassroots activism of America's "newest minority" both reflects and is instrumental in broader processes of political change throughout the Pacific. Addressing the call for more global approaches to racial and ethnic politics, contributors describe how Asian immigrants strategically navigate the hurdles to domestic incorporation and equality by turning their political sights and energies toward Asia. These essays convincingly demonstrate that Asian American political participation in the U.S. does not consist simply of domestic actions with domestic ends.

Chop suey. Sushi. Curry. Adobo. Kimchi. The deep associations Asians in the United States have with food have become ingrained in the American popular imagination. So much so that contentious notions of ethnic authenticity and authority are marked by and argued around images and ideas of food. Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader collects burgeoning new scholarship in Asian American Studies that centers the study of foodways and culinary practices in our understanding of the racialized underpinnings of Asian Americanness. It does so by bringing together twenty scholars from across the disciplinary spectrum to inaugurate a new turn in food studies: the refusal to yield to a superficial multiculturalism that naively celebrates difference and reconciliation through the pleasures of food and eating. By focusing on multi-sited struggles across various spaces and times, the contributors to this anthology bring into focus the potent forces of class, racial, ethnic, sexual and gender inequalities that pervade and persist in the production of Asian American culinary and alimentary practices, ideas, and images. This is the first collection to consider the fraught itineraries of Asian American immigrant histories and how they are inscribed in the production and dissemination of ideas about Asian American foodways.